


Behind Closed Doors

by supernatasha



Series: Charred Metal and Hope [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, Arya Changes Face, Arya Wears A Body, Future Fic, Masturbation, Not Faceless Anymore, Other, Out of Body Experiences, Self Exporation, Series Spoilers, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:27:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernatasha/pseuds/supernatasha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Had this beauty always been here, waiting for her to return? How was it that she had forsaken this body with its joys still so unexplored? She craved for the nights she ran as a wolf, but even Nymeria did not bring her weightless flight with her speed as this body did with simple touches.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind Closed Doors

Weasel, Nan, Salty, Arry… she thinks sometimes that she has so many names, she will never be able to remember her real one. Almost as if that name no longer exists. And why should it, when the girl the name had belonged to no longer exists? She is No One.

There is only this: a nameless, faceless presence who can kill a man without lifting a finger and dreams of running with wolves. Yes, there is this.

There is a girl who learned of death when her father was beheaded, who learned of love when the bastard she loved chose brothers over her, who learned of loss when the Hound didn’t let her die with her mother and brother, who learned of sacrifice when she left behind Westeros.

The girl who finally became a woman in Braavos.

When she’d had her first moon’s blood, the Kindly Man told her she could choose to keep the blood, and the body that brought it, or she could let it go and slip into others. She chose to leave it. Chose to leave the breasts she would have to bind every morning, chose to leave the hips that would attract the attention of men.

It’s not that she was unaware. Cat of the Canals knew what happened behind closed doors, between men and woman, or men and men, or women and women, or those who didn’t fit in. She had seen through a thousand eyes, cats and dogs and cripples and beggars. Once, as a tabby, she had even followed the Handsome Man on his daily affairs and saw him seduce several women. The Man had known she was there and winked at the cat on the rafters, and the woman under him had screamed and screamed and the tabby had jumped off the roof and ran away.

She had taken bodies or all shapes and sizes and colors. She knows the anatomy. But she has no time to care about that. She has work to be done, which the Kindly Man or the Waif give her every morning. Sweeping, skinning, sighing.

This day’s work is nearly over, and she is tired- a tiredness that has seeped down into her bones. By the time she is finished with the gutting and storing of organs, her body is dirt-laden and sticky with blood. She discards the large soft body, reminding her of gentle Hodor, and returns to her own body. It feels foreign; she has spent such little time in it. She heads down to her room in the bowels of the building. It’s cold and sterile, wan light coming in through the barred window and a mirror for her to inspect her body for the day.

She finishes a simple meal and falls asleep rather quickly (there is another body calling to her, from an ocean away) on the straw bed. She finds the wolf almost immediately. The wolf doesn’t mind when she slips in, barely acknowledging the new conscious. And she runs, _runs_ through the forest.

She comes across a scent and her muscles come to a stop. With her nose to the ground, she follows the scent. She cannot place it. The wolf, and the girl inside the wolf, have become adept at identifying smells, particularly those of meat: squirrel, rabbit, rat, crow. But this is none of them. It is more visceral that that, unfamiliar in her territory. Nymeria knows instinctively that this is none of her pack.

Sometimes, Nymeria feels other presences calling to her, siblings. Never the eldest or the kindest of them, those she doesn’t feel anymore. But there are others, a silent one and a feral one and one that has seen more than she can understand. But this scent is unlike any of those. Nymeria surges forward, losing her track temporarily when  a fresh layer of snow on the ground masks the scent, but then she leaps over a branch and finds the source of it.

It is a large wolf, with black fur. Not as a large as a direwolf, but comparable. The beast growls at Nymeria. Nymeria bares her own fangs and raises her hackles with a guttural snarl. A moment later, the wolf lets out a soft “whoof” and falls back on his haunches.

Nymeria returns the gesture and relaxes, approaches him. The male lets her thoroughly sniff him and waits patiently for her to finish.

The girl in the wolf insists, _Intruder! Stranger!_ But Nymeria silences her and touches her snout to the male’s jaws. She turns her head to the moon and howls softly, not loud enough for her pack to find her, just enough for the male to join in. Nymeria raises her tail and allows the wolf near her, welcoming.

Arya wakes with a gasp, a start, and a thought:

_I am a woman._

She is not No One and she cannot pretend any longer. Though she is exhausted and conflicted, she rises and finds herself before the mirror, examining the face in the mirror. She see’s wild eyes and matted hair, too-thin lips and too-wide teeth, sloping cheekbones with shiny gray eyes peering out from under straight eyebrows, her long face streaked with dirt.

_Horseface._

She remembers, when she was younger, her mother running a hand over her cheeks and leaving behind rouge the color of withered flowers. She had looked as though she had come down with the flu. Hers was not a face meant to look pretty (her father compared her to Lyanna, but that was not a face she knew). Untamed and glorious, yes, like something out of the Godswood, but not pretty. Unlike Sansa’s face. Sansa was beautiful, no matter what. But she could not be Sansa.

Today, she does not want her face. She sends silent thankful prayer to the Many-Faced God for sending the Handsome Man to her and teaching her the art of changing faces.

Finally, Arya closes her eyes and considers which face she would wear if not her own. Jacquen? Not his new face, but the one she had met, the one that had died when she said his name. No, even that was not the face she wanted.

She knew then, explicitly, which face, which _body,_ to call upon. She does the best she can from memory and lets instinct fill in the rest. By the time she opens her eyes, she felt as though he was physically present in the room.

Gendry Waters.

His angry dark eyes shined out from under heavy eyebrows, dark hair a mess falling over his forehead. It surprised Arya that seeing him brought about a physical ache deep in her belly- his belly. Curiously, she pulls up her tunic and she knows that body (pressing against it in the dark for warmth, bending over a hearth forging metal, covered in a sheen of sweat)- yes, she knows that body. Arya feels perverse; surely it was crossing some boundary. She cannot help the feeling that comes upon her so strongly that she has to let his body drop and return to her own.

They are not the feelings of a girl missing her wolf, nor a girl who is unsatisfied with her face; they are the feelings of a woman who needs a fucking.

The thought catches her off guard. She has desires. Where previously, she had only had a childish notion of fancying a lad, now she had lust.

Back in herself, the matured and flowered Arya, she focuses on her body when before she had examined only her face. She pulls her blouse over her head and lets it fall in a heap to the floor, facing this peculiar sight before her. She is _curvy,_ lean and lithe, but with swells in places she had not realized. Her breasts are round, small and unwilling to bow to the ground. She reaches up and touches one of the small pink buds. It elicits a gasp from her.

This was going to take time, Arya thought. Almost instinctively, she heads for her straw bed. There is so much she doesn’t know, what to do, how to do it. But her skin is smooth and inviting. Her fingers head down, dipping at her navel before she pulls off her breeches and crumples them with her blouse. Arya comes across hair, more like wolf fur, but she has no time to be curious as she feels a stirring that she inexplicably links with Gendry.

She finds herself wet when her fingers reach down. With her first experimental stroke, she knows she has found what she was looking for. It feels amazing, better than any other sensation she has felt in her time alive. Arya knows it is not done yet- there is still more lurking under the surface that she must drive to the edge. She parts her legs further, grazing over herself with her knuckles.

Arya squeezes her eyes shut and lets her mind wander- but there is only one face to return to.

She thinks of Gendry leaning over her, his knee between her legs and nudging at her entrance. His rough fire-licked hands kneading her breasts, twisting and pulling, tracing his tongue down her skin, tugging at the delicate flesh with his teeth. She trembles thinking of how his beard would feel against the insides of her thighs, how his skin would be flushed red.

One hand still rubbing, she feels inside herself with a finger of the other hand and that ache is lost in physical want. She knows better than to raise her voice lest the walls have ears, but even she cannot help the soft sighs and moans escaping her throat. Despite the scratchy straw stuffing, her hips grind against the mattress. Then she finds her nub, the spot she need only press to see the gods, and she howls softly as her wolf had done.

Had this beauty always been here, waiting for her to return? How was it that she had forsaken this body with its joys still so unexplored? She craved for the nights she ran as a wolf, but even Nymeria did not bring her this weightless flight with her speed as this body did with simple touches.

She imagines Gendry hunching over her, working his tongue where her fingers are. The fantasy gets stronger and the smell of musk pervades so she can’t breathe out, only inhales short staccato breathes. There is something else, another smell in the air: charred metal and hope. The hearth. Home.

Gendry peering up at her with his intense blue eyes and that mischievous smile, his husky voice whispering “Mi’lady,” even though she hates being called that, two fingers inside begging her to come- and _oh._

She does.

Her eyes open wide and her back arches as waves of pleasure curl her entire body. Arya growls, a sound unfit for a girl, even for a woman, but not for a she-wolf. She rides out the breathless climax with her head thrown back against the straw.

She does not know how she will ever leave this body for another; nothing else would ever feel like home as unequivocally as this one does.

 _My body_ , she thinks with pride.

Arya waits until her breathing returns to normal before throwing on her clothes and sinking back down on the mattress. She knows now why, behind closed doors, women scream and shriek and call for the gods, but not in pain or prayer.

Finally, after years of being faceless, she has a face again. She has memories. She remembers Winterfell and Syrio Forel, she remembers Harrenhal. Just for this one night, she allows herself to think of everything she’s lost, her brothers and sister, her home, everything she was. It was no wonder she had chosen to become faceless instead of a face with nowhere to go.

She remembers at last and lets those memories haunt her.

She does not remember falling asleep, and she does not remember the prayer escaping her lips as she falls out of conscious, “Ser Amory, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei…” 


End file.
